Kathryn Stockett

I'm a white woman, and I wrote about a white woman writing a book.

I think it was more that I didn't want to disappoint people.

And when you feel so strongly about putting out, like you said, a second album that holds up to the first album,

It's paralyzing at times.

When I wrote The Help, there were no expectations of me.

I wrote it purely out of homesickness when I was living in New York City right after 9-11.

And I wrote it because I wanted to hear those voices of my childhood.

But when I sat down to write the second book, instead of just me alone in a room writing to answer some of my own questions about life in Mississippi, now it was me.

in a room with all those readers and critics and a contract with my publisher.

It was daunting, for sure.

So, it's, of course, set in Mississippi in a town called Oxford, which is in North Mississippi and also where the University of Mississippi is based, which is very important to the story as, you know, if you make it to part two, you will find out.

And there are two voices in this book.

One is an 11-year-old girl named Meg, who one day her mother went to the store and mysteriously never came home.

So we meet her two years later in an orphanage, and Meg finds herself unadoptable because nobody wants to adopt the big girls.

They only want the babies.

And where Meg is headed, you know, where they send the girls when they turn 12, is the vegetable canning factory in Mississippi.

And the reason why the child labor laws didn't apply to canning vegetables is because they were seen as seasonal and they needed the labor.

And so there was lots of exploitation for that.

The second voice is Bertie Calhoun, a very Irish name, and she's 24.

And, you know, people already consider her a spinster because at the ripe old age of 24, she's not married.